The DPU's Catalina Ortiz awarded the Bartlett ECR GCRF funding

The DPU are delighted that Catalina Ortiz has received £110,000 of Bartlett ECR GCRF funding for her project ‘Activating Learning for Slum Upgrading: A Co-designed Storytelling Platform for Medellin’.

The Bartlett Faculty run a competitive process to fund an Early Career Researcher (ECR) Fellowship to support cross-disciplinary ODA-compliant research linked to the Sustainable Development Goals, focused on one or more of the following areas: energy access, resilient infrastructure, sustainable industrialization, safe and inclusive cities, sustainable consumption / production patterns, and on promoting the long-term sustainable growth of, and development of partnerships and future research capacity in DAC-list countries.

DPU's Catalina Ortiz submitted a proposal guided by the question: how can cities across regions learn from slum upgrading strategies using transmedia storytelling? The aim of the proposal is to offer new visual and digital tools to recalibrate the debate on slum upgrading policies and the role of the circulation of urban knowledge across cities. The objective is to develop a novel methodology to understand and foster the often dispersed and fragmented efforts of promoting slum upgrading by introducing the practice of transmedia storytelling. The project uses as pilot case the city of Medellin that has been considered a benchmark for Slum Upgrading Strategies (UN Habitat, 2014) and focuses on the co-design of a transmedia platform involving local grassroots organizations working on informal settlements, local city officials, civic hackers, and leaders of transnational development networks.

The project was awarded £110,000 of funding after careful consideration of a range of prosals submitted from across the Faculty.